forty dollars apiece, but the owner said each one was worth over

four-hundred. The next seven weeks I had different High School

photos: football games, girls, homecoming queens, accidents.

They loved 'em and now I could get a 305 Honda Super Hawk.

But by the second week of that Dog N Suds job, I would be

slicing cheese wondering what it would be like to have the rest

of my summer vacation off. I mean, I didn't have to study this 

summer. I was starting to make enough money with the photos.

I had a new bike. Look at all these people playing pinball and

the drive-in theater was next door. After all, this is the summer 

of love. I had long hair, people were starting to smoke joints in

public, and in six weeks I'd have to start my second year of high

school. This was Monday and I would have to open up with the

owner every afternoon, Monday through Friday. He just bought 

the place. I was stopped cold in my summer fantasy and told to

go downstairs and fill the five-gallon bucket with condensed

Root Beer. Each gallon cost eighty-dollars back then; five times

eighty is four-hundred. I had to bring the full bucket upstairs

and dump it in the trough, where it's mixed up with tap water for

that Frosty Mug taste. On top of the last step, I tripped and 

spilled it all over the workers floor. The other guys were

furious--they had to mop it. I was sent down for another batch.

By this time it was like a comedy. When I got upstairs I slipped

on the wet mopped floor. Eight hundred dollars of concentrate

on a forty-dollar a week, forty-hour job--gone! Hell!, he could 

have just paid me a few hundred not to work there. He fired me

instead. The next afternoon at opening time, I was sitting at

home and we all heard a big explosion. We thought it was

probably one of the factories nearby, the place was two miles 

away. The next morning when I delivered the papers the

headlines said the Dog N Suds blew up. Apparently when he

fired me, he was short one employee to shut the gas off the next

afternoon. I was usually there to open the place. He opened the

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